Fujifilm X-E1 preview extended

Just Posted: an extensive update to our Fujifilm X-E1 preview. With a sensor and imaging pipeline that is identical to the X-Pro1's the X-E1 promises much of the X-Pro1's fun in a more compact and affordable package. We've been working with a production sample X-E1 for a couple of weeks and we've been working towards a full review, which we hope to publish early in the new year. In the meantime we've added seven pages to the preview, including our studio test shots and a sample gallery. Click through for a link to the expanded preview, including our 49-image real-world sample gallery.

The Fuji X-pro 1 was beyond my budget so I'm happy with this X-E1. I have the black one with the zoom lens and use it together with my GF1+20mm pancake. Most of the online reviews were read before I bought the Fuji and it strikes me that nobody mentioned the sharp edge of the plastic control wheel that you use to change settings.The sharp edge is noticed when you press this little grey wheel to activate the zoom function like you do in manual focus.

I found a very nice tip by another user to use manual focus with 3x zoom and focus lock on Fuji lenses. You first press 3x zoom and aim at the spot you want to put focus on, then push AE-L/AF-L and the lens will focus tack-sharp in manual focus mode. You can also adjust with minimal rotation of the lens barrel to another spot. Press shutter for one or multiple shots. The focus distance will not change. Wish that Fuji comes with a Firmware update where the Fn button can be used for the 3x zoom. That would make me forget the sharp edge.

I'm with rusticus... I have the X100 and love the hybrid viewfinder... and it has shown me how an EVF CAN sometimes be good (like in macro mode when it eliminates paralax)... but I still want an OPTICAL VIEWFINDER BABY!!! Even a cheap one that slides on to the hotshoe and is matched to the lens.

will be interested to see how dpreview will address in full review the flash behavior of XE1 built in mini flash:Correction is limited to +/- 2/3 EV.Using it as fill in flash in normal/ambient shadow conditions it works decent to have results hardly detectable as being flashed. But in low light conditions with higher Iso I get results looking always almost over exposured, showing too much flash light and destroyed atmosphere. Low speeds settings, correct manual aperture settings and rear curtain sync does not help. Flash looks always too strong. Would need flash power correction to -2 EV to achieve desired results looking non flashed. This way I used to operate with Nikon gear as D7000. Hopefully Fujifilm will/can improve this by software update.The High Iso potential of this camera demands are very controllable fill in flash capability under low light. This is what I am missing.Also external Fujifilm Flash XE 20 offers only +/- 1 EV correction.

It is exactly that marvellous hybrid OVF - with distance scale, level line, over 100% view, .. which is absolutely unique and reminiscent of range-finder classic, that stands out this camera over the others.

The parallax correction is indicated there too. But of course it is not as precise for close-ups, but for this the EVF is there easy switchable - yes EVF is worse than the state of the art - but OVF has only Fuji.

Autofocus is the same on X-Pro1 and X-E1 when you use the same lens and firmware. X-Pro1 offers optical viewfinder and higher resolution LCD - whether cost is justified depends on your needs - for some it's worth it.

@TWTTom: confirmed, it is definitely worth! The OVF involves you in the action and allows you to foresee the time for the right composition ( There are more things in heaven and earth, Qweryasdf, than are seen by your sensor: a wider coverage in the viewfinder may help)

I had a Canon 5DmarkII, but it was too heavy to carry all the stuff around.Now I have the Fuji X-E1 with the 18-55mm.It is superb, great pictures taken on iso 3200;1/30I hope you come soon with a real review on this camera.In the meantime you can look at the preview from Ken Rockwell http://www.kenrockwell.com/fuji/x-e1.htm

Excellent camera. I use it with Leica lenses 1.4 35mm. I like it very much. Colors are different from Leica M9, but also quite good. Ergonomic is super. Nex7 makes prefect picture, but ergonomic is weak. MD-5 has relatively big noise level. I think that pictures in Dpreview compare tool for MD-5 is not correct, in reality noise level is much bigger. I need in raw developing software for Fuji for Mac. Lightroom develops Fuji's raw files very badly.

Not unusual!! Nikon Canon ecc... with 2.8 aperture are huge, heavy and made for reflex cameras!!! Don't you know!! !8-55 for small sensor so small does not exist with 2.8. aperture! Dpreview is right!!

"In return its rear screen is slightly downgraded in terms of both size and resolution, to a still-respectable 2.8" 460k dot LCD - according to Fujifilm this is necessary to keep the camera's size down."

Really? Then why is the NEX 7 smaller with a larger screen with MORE resolution? More idiotic marketing from FUJIFILM.

It's mot portable DVD player its photographic camera... in my opinion its better to have slightly smaller screen in advantage of more space for buttons and for your thumb-this is only one thing that I really don't like about E-M5(in my opinion the best all-around EVIL camera) design screen is to f. huge taking space that could be use for bigger buttons or more thumb rest area. nex-7 screen have different aspect ratio, so no totally available space is similar with that of x-e1.

About resolution...this days you can produce HD 720p of that size so that's FUJI fail statement:)X-E1 screen is good enough, but good colors, I can compere it only to my old nex-5 920k screen and really maybe Fuji screen its not stat of art but its up to current standards.

While using two canon dslr, I started thinking about the raw processing, noise removing, sharpening, color balancing, retouching... What a boring process. And how far from the simple kodachrome or velvia slide approach!

I understand that pros may need all that, but for a traveller like I am, the Fuji approach can give you back all the pleasure and immediacy. Without compromising on quality.

The results from my x-pro 1 look fantastic, in spite of the inexperienced photographer I am. I expect the shots taken with the xe-1 to be on the same league

"The results from my x-pro 1 look fantastic, in spite of the inexperienced photographer I am."

And now try to imagine how boring, flat, mediocre and poor those results will look to you, when you become experienced photographer - then you inevitably will be interested in some good raw based workflow. Good luck in gathering experience.

Why do you feel the need to preach what other people should be using when they are perfectly happy with what they have? Will you not sleep at night if someone enjoys their jpeg's and does not use RAW at all?

@Gediminas 8: Not at all, everything is all right with my sleep. But when someone has the right to tell the others that he doesn't need RAW I feel my need to express my very need of RAW workflow. It would be very bad (from my point of view) if manufacturers would not support RAW workflow - jpg lovers have nothing to lose.

If you are speaking about "Panasonic"- their lenses are magnificent. Idon't just mean their Leica branded lenses. They as always are superb. The Lumix lenses themselves are beyond belief. Their 45-200 (90-400 efl) is too sharp for the average portrait. What the FZ200 has, however, is that constant f 2.8 aperture. I feel now that I can sit at a coffeehouse, and image people at other tables in available light, without too much noise at 1600 ISO from a distance, and avoid their movement blur which drives ma crazy. The average zoom, which closes down at longer focal lengths - always made this difficult.

Panasonic lens are sharp, yes. But unfortunately they are heavily software corrected in camera and it does have a price.

And for that amount of SW correction, they are heavily overpriced. You are actually paying for cheap, distorted and full of CA lens with software correction. Grats to that. They are only sharp. Which on other hand is almost everything else too.

New Sony "pancake" zoom for NEX is same, they just fixed via SW even bigger distortion, without fix it doesnt even cover APS-C sensor.

I don't quite agree to this notion. Whatever is the price of the SW correction, it is reflected in the final result. If the final result from a SW corrected lens is better than the final result from the optically corrected lens then it is a better lens in my opinion.

vroger1,Nice that you love your Panasonic products as your continued posts here show, but haven't you ever thought that there might be more appropriate places to preach Panasonic's advanced point-and-shoot cameras (or bridge cameras if you prefer) than under an article on a Fujifilm mirrorless camera?

I fully agree with Mescalamba. What optics missed or distorted the electronic correction can not retrieve, because... it is not there. The electronic correction is simply using algorithms to extrapolate and to "guess" missing details. While usually it does not really matter that much, the bottom line is: there is no substitution for a correctly designed high quality glass.

Well, problem is that optically corrected lens would be better than SW corrected. Maybe it would be more expensive, but thing is "SW" correction is "free". Everyone can do it. Just flick CA/fringe in LightRoom and enable distortion correction. Done.

Btw. thats why Leica designed lens for m4/3 are quite a bit bigger and expensive.

I have nothing with "tiny bit" of SW correction. But both Panasonic and Sony are way over that "tiny bit". For example Samsung does this too, but its exactly that tolerable amount. Ofc Samsung does number of other things wrong, so this doesnt help them that much..

Panasonic colors are ok. You just need to avoid LightRoom or create custom color profiles for it. I thought same, then I tried Capture One. Colors depend on ICC profiles which are unique to each RAW converting SW. If you shoot studio shot and had Sony NEX-5N, Nikon D5100, Panasonic GX-1 and made correct ICC profiles for all of them, you wouldnt be able to tell difference, unless you have supergood eye for color.

My always with me camera for a long time was the GX1- but I needed something with greater lens flexibility. Towards that end I am now carrying (only for the time being to test it) the FZ200. It's a little on the ungainly side but the results have been satisfyingly sharp. When I travel I carry a Lumix GX1- for everyday.

Just ordered a Leica M adapter - the low cost version. Will test some Zeiss and Leica lenses on it. Elmarit 28mm seems to be a good choice for this machine, what do you think? It should be the always with me camera/ lens combination.

Buyer beware! I own a Zeiss 25mm Biogon that I tried on my XPro1 with the M adapter...and the results are awful. Basically the outer third of the image is smeared with little detail.The same Lens on my Leica M8 was TACK sharp right into the corners, even at f2.8

I traded my D7000 with a bunch of lenses for a X-E1, 18-55, 35/1.4. I am really happy with it. Better IQ, light, have it with me every time I leave home, 35/1.4 is amazing. But, it isn't a SLR. Don't expect CAF and it isn't as fast as a SLR. But I am not in a hurry when photographing. Very happy with it. I find myself just playing around with the shutter time dial... or aperture ring... old school and I like it.

You certainly do not sound like an objective reviewer - more like someone badly hurt by Fuji. I know you've been unlucky with two X-E1s, but statements like "the lenses are a bit flimsy for the price" and "Fuji are doing it wrong. How can raws be worse than the already poor jpegs? If you think the jpegs are good you must have shot Nikon or Canon" sound like something from a trolling textbook, going diametrally against every other review out there.

And talking about ergonomics: how do you "sort it out after a year"? By a firmware update perhaps? I personally found the _OM-D_ unbearable from this standpoint.

If you think this gallery of OOC JPEGs is poor, then please point me to direction of better JPEGs. Frankly except my old KM-7D I havent seen much better ones. Certainly not from big names.

Fuji did it right. Im not sure how you can tie Adobe to Fuji. I hope you understand that Adobe is 3rd party converter. And in case of Fuji it was always bit iffy. I guess they have something against them, cause I dont have another explanation.

Not really conspiracy theory, it does smooth out bit of chroma noise in RAW. But nothing important really, if you process RAW right (today it means only two RAW developers - RPP for MAC or Photivo for Win machine), then you will see that NR isnt issue.

Demoisacing algorithms are problem, so sticking to JPEG is usually better and easier. That said, both RPP and Photivo can give you pretty sweet files to work with too.

Here is "how to", Im not saying its easy, but it does work to some degree and it does work way better than anything else so far. It just complicated, so be prepared to face it and fight it. Results are quite worth it.

Just math, actually. See page 11 of the review for the sensor CFA pattern. It has 8/36 instead of 9/36 sensels each for red and blue, which means 5% less color information than standard Bayer CFAs. It also has 5% more green (roughly, luminance). That might not sound like a bit difference, but it's huge. Interpolating color along luminance-defined boundaries gives the effects everyone is noting.

tk, the review clearly says it has it. Don't get me wrong, the jpgs are out of this world good. I just want straight up raws to work with. If this thing could focus like a dslr, they could sell a million of them. really.

Oh yeah, no NEX-6 review yet. ;-) Ok, compare with the NEX-5N -- looks like Fuji has less raw color noise, but much softer detail... both probably due to the interpolation algorithm for the Fuji sensor. Put another way, Fuji has less raw color data so there's more luminance-directed smoothing going on, which obviously can work. Fuji does a nice job of preserving the "Fuji look" in their handling of colors in general.

Overall, this is still a little pricey compared to a NEX-6, but it is nice to see another company getting a more competitive entry in the mirrorless APS-C field. Pitty they don't all have the same or compatible lens mounts....

Bought several weeks ago on the strength of hugely liking my results with the X100. Delighted with this camera too. Great in the hand, easy to carry with you always. Superb pictures. Autofocus still a wee bit sluggish sometimes but it's not really a problem as it's not a camera for taking snapshots. I only shoot jpegs, the colour is always pleasingly natural and accurate. Great product in terms of function & aesthetics.

Related to the subject at hand. The images look wonderful. I just have gotten so used to the Evf/Ovf on the X100 I really think the X-Pro 1 is more attractive, perhaps slightly larger but a necessity all the same for me.

I have to say that those high-ISOs are stellar. I love Fuji's rendering choices, allowing for some grain and shying away from over-smearing that others would call "clean". I'd call the Sony and Olympus images cartoonish with Pentax second best to Fuji.

Is it just me, or is my impression correct that since Amazon's acqusition of dpreview even the most popular cameras take longer and longer to get reviewed and more and more reviews only come in trickles? If I still was the "early adopter" of camera tech I kind of used to be for some time, dpreview could not exert much influence on my decisions anymore these days.

No, it's not just you. I think Dpreview has become that slow in reviewing new cameras and lenses that the site has lost it's interest for a lot of people. See also the whining interest in the forums. If they don't change this policy Dpreview will be an - extint - dinosaur soon. Enthousiastic bloggers like Ming Thein, Robin Wong etc. will take over because they are able (and willing!) to act fast. Manafacturers are already aware of this and give their new stuff to these bloggers to review.

Uhm..... what has film's death(or apparent slow demise) got to do with slow reviews?

The site's name is dpreview, it does reviews on digital photography. People come to the site for the reviews. If it does not have the latest or is not forthcoming with the reviews on digital photography, it sort of defeat the purpose of having a gear review site in the first place doesn't it?Dpreview is expanding more into other aspect of photography other than just gear reviews, I find that commendable and I do like it but I still stand by my earlier point.

@antifocus; yes, the reviews are thorough and ok. They just lose their relevance because of the delays. And so is Dpreview as a site to which people turn for their info. Smart businesses understand the need for keeping up with progress or even better lead the way. Companies like Kodak didn't, look where they stand now (talking about flim's death ...)

After all these years, I've virtually given up on DPR. It's a hand-wringing shame. Not only do the reviews come by trickles, but some of them are even being done by another reviewer. Now I'll have to be slogging thru Reviews.CNET, Digilloyd, Imaging Resource, Digital Camera Review, Steve's Digicams, Photography Blog, 1001 Noisy Cameras, ByThom, SansMirror, Digital Camera Info, Cameralabs, DCResource, The Digital Picture, Pixel-Peeper, DXOmark, Lenstip, SLRgear, DPInterface, Steve Huff, Engadget, Techradar, Pocket Lint, Ken Rockwell, Luminous Landscape, Photozone.de, and a few others. I'd rather not have to do that.

@EricWN - Ok. I should've made myself clearer: I know the OP didn't complain about the acquisition per se. What he complained (and has been beaten to death over and over and over again, and it is sill going) is that "after DPREVIEW's been bought by Amazon, the reviews are getting slower and blah blah blah".

@DeanAllan - Film's death doesn't have anything to do. I was just being sarcastic. Since people still complain about an OLD thing (relating Amazon to anything bad that happens to DPReview), people should go back even further and complain about Film x Digital again.

Thing is: reviews here have always being slower than other sites. The difference is that years ago there weren't anywhere near SO MANY camera releases as there are now. So that's why things seem slower. Simply there are too many cameras to review.Only if they had a team of 50+ people....

I'd really like to see a review of the Canon 6D. BTW, what ever happened to the Nikon D4 and Canon 1DX? I thought perhaps these bodies were too high-end for DPR but I noticed the D3 was tested ages ago.

Edit: Comments that DPR are useless now, however, is unfair. I still find their reviews to be among the best in the industry.

already have the X-E1 with 18-55, and with one of the shots taken with it just won and recieved a Fuji XP170 from fujifilm cmpetition. X-E1, sublime to use and amazing colour renditions. now just need adobe to sort out ACR to fully support RAF and then its job done